A successful author podcast is a valuable tool for promotion, collaboration, and building your brand. Our author's podcasting success tips will ensure you can lay the foundations for a wide-reaching podcast to go with your next bestseller.

A Guide to Successful Author Podcasting

We'll look at some specific author podcasting success tips in a moment, but first let's answer the question: What is an author podcast actually for anyway?

Your author podcast should be an enjoyable venture that helps you do the following:

• Reach your current readership
• Reach new readership
• Promote your latest projects
• Connect with other authors
• Strengthen your author's brand

Your target listeners are the same group of people who are in your target audience for your book. Your author podcast should revolve around the genre you write in and your life as a writer. The content should be what your target audience wants to hear.

Ensure you make reference to your book, projects, blog, website, social media platforms, and any other elements of your author brand that are out there. This way, listeners will know where to find you and how to interact with you.

A podcast is a powerful tool, and if you can craft compelling audio content, it will do wonders for promoting your work as an author. Before you start your podcast, do some research on how to get going. Look into different platforms and ways of recording. Pay attention to the terms of use of different platforms, as some, like Spotify, regularly update theirs.

8 Author Podcast Success Tips

Here are 8 tips to guide you to successful author podcasting.

Ensure Excellent Audio Quality

If nobody can hear what you are saying, then regardless of how interesting your talking points are, they won't be able to get invested in your podcast. The audio quality of your podcast has to be strong so that your listeners can follow along.

When you're crafting compelling audio content, it's important to record that audio in a quiet environment. You need to avoid distracting background noises or annoying echoes. Avoid recording next to a refrigerator or other noisy machinery.

In terms of equipment, the main thing you need is a good microphone. For audio, you need a uni-directional microphone, which is a microphone that picks up sound from one direction. You want this because the microphone needs to pick up your voice but not the surrounding noise.

Slow Down

A fatal flaw so many of us have when we get in front of a microphone is that we start talking really fast. When we're having a normal conversation with someone, we are familiar with, this is okay, but if we turn into Speedy Gonzales in a podcast, our listeners won't be able to keep up.

You don't need to start speaking painfully slowly by any means; you should, however, go a little bit slower than your normal speaking voice. You want clear, coherent speech. Besides, slowing down means it's easier to not lose track of your thoughts, and you don't end up using as many filler sounds like "eh" and "uhm."

Have a Solid Script

Your script is your friend. Many people struggle when they get in front of a mic because they don't have a good idea of what they are going to say. The way to avoid this is by having a script. But what goes into a script.

You should have a basic introduction. Even if it's just "welcome to the podcast, I'm..." or any general introduction—you just need a general idea of how you are starting off. From there, you should have some bullet points of basic talking points throughout the podcast, so you know what order you're going to be covering different topics in.

A key thing to remember is not reading your script word for word as such. It is there to be a guide for you. You need to avoid sounding like you are reading directly off the page. The script is a helpful map for you to follow, but it should be a prompt rather than something you recite word for word.

Collaborate

Collaboration is a powerful tool for authors. For your podcast, you should aim to get authors from the same genre so you can discuss different elements of writing and the literary scene.

Collaborating with authors has symbiotic benefits, as you both get to promote your own work and author brands while helping each other do the same. One of the man-author podcasting success tips you should follow is getting good guests on your show who are knowledgeable about the topic you are covering.

Be Consistent

A common trend with podcasts is that people start them, but they don't last long. There'll be three weeks with consecutive episodes, and then suddenly it falls off. Often times, podcasters can be far too sporadic with their content. They may start their journey by uploading an episode every Tuesday, but then two weeks in there's no content, then an episode turns up the following week, and the week after that an episode shows up on a Friday.

If you are going to get regular listeners, your listeners need to know when your episodes are coming. Pick a day and a time to schedule your episode for each week.

Use Social Media

For promoting your podcast, and really anything to do with yourself as an author, social media is a vital tool. Everyone uses it, and your target audience is going to be there. When it comes to author podcasting success tips related to promoting your content, posting regularly on social media is right at the top of the list. TikTok is a particularly important platform for authors. Consider taking clips of your podcast and putting them up as short videos on BookTok or Instagram.

Look at the Data

We've just talked about promoting your podcast and posting consistently. But how can you be sure you are reaching the right people? Thankfully, podcast platforms allow you to review data analytics. This data will give you information such as:

• How many listens did an episode get?
• When episodes were listened to.
• Where your listeners are
• How old are your listeners
• Whether your listeners are male or female
• How people listen to your podcasts

By reviewing this data, you can optimize the reach of your episode and see what works and what doesn't.

Edit Effectively

Good editing is essential for success in podcasting. Editing your podcast creatively and effectively plays a major role in the overall crafting of compelling audio content.

There are a few things to consider when editing. For example, you should look to cut down on any overly long pieces of audio to make things more succinct. Cut out any unnecessarily lengthy pauses and gaps in speech. You should also trim away some filler words like "ehm" and "uhm" and instances of people repeating themselves.

You may find you need to rerecord a piece of audio. You might need a better-quality sound, or you might want to add something extra. If you're doing this, make sure the volume of the new recording is the same as the previous recordings. Before you export your audio to upload, you should always use the compressor and normalizer tools.

There's plenty of good audio editing software available. Adobe Audition is industry standard and available upon subscription, while Audacity is free and has the necessary tools to make a podcast.

Ingredients for Crafting Compelling Audio Content

To follow on from our author's podcasting success tips, let's look at four key ingredients for a good-quality podcast:

• Research: The good thing about doing an author podcast is that you already have a good level of knowledge based on the topic of your book. But ensure you keep researching guests, their work, and any other developments in the literature.
• Guests: If you want to craft compelling audio content, you'll need somebody interesting to talk to. Getting the right guests for your podcast can make or break it. Reach out confidently through social media or email and pitch your podcast. It's best to get guests who have something relevant to talk about; for example, they write books in the same genre as your work.
• Planning: Have a plan for your content across a couple of episodes. You don't want to burn through all your topics of conversation in Episode 1. So think long-term and plan a few episodes in advance. Look ahead to any events coming up, and plan episodes in relation to your own work.
• Interesting Topics: The things you talk about on the podcast have to draw in your listeners and captivate them. Brainstorm some interesting things you can cover in your podcasts. AI tools like KIP are valuable for idea generation.

Final Thoughts

These author podcast success tips can help you get started on your way to crafting compelling audio content. Use the advice in this guide to successful author podcasting to set you on your way to having another creative outlet for growing your author brand.